Human History
''' First Steps Since the dawn of time, humankind has been driven to reach the stars. In 1957, two rival nations announced their intention to leave solid ground behind and set foot on the Earth's moon. Twelve years later, man achieved his goal. Early in the 21st century, man sent a probe to roam the surface of Mars. In the year 2073 A.D., man terraformed Mars and founded the first post-Earth colony. ' Rise of the Paxia Empire The Paxia Corporation was the chief force behind humankind's rapid expansion into space. They launched a flurry of probes that sent back findings related to the worlds discovered in the depths. What they found was kept secret but they immediately started launching manned missions deeper and deeper into space.. The Paxia Corporation started as a small privately funded organization which supported a variety of scientific laboratories via grants. One such laboratory changed the trajectory of human civilization with the development of the Hawking Warp Drive. The Paxia Corporation went to any length necessary to maintain the secrecy of the inner workings of their Warp Ships, giving them a complete monopoly on interstellar trade and information between all known human settlements. In a few short years the Paxia Corporation was the most wealthy and powerful entity in the galaxy, and it used that power to consolidate the whole of humanity under their rule. Thus the Paxia Empire was born. ' Expansion into the Void The Empire was only made possible because of the Warp Ships. By controlling the ships, Paxia maintained its firm control of the Empire. Under the yolk of the Empire the Humans prospered and expanded their territory significantly. To control its growing network of worlds, the Empire formed a great army whose soldiers numbered in the millions. So great was the empire's army that it divided soldiers into manageable divisions known as Arms of the Empire. Some Arms were stationed on worlds to better control the operations there or keep unruly populations under control. Others pressed deeper into space, seizing more worlds in the empire's name. It was through a military Arm that first encounter was made. Lack of understanding and with no protocol to handle such an event, the race was exterminated. Since then many alien races were have been discovered. Some were found in star systems ripe for human habitation. In many cases the Empire absorbed lesser races who swore fealty to the Empire, although critics say these aliens had little choice since the only other options the Empire offered were exile from their own worlds or extermination. ' ' The Black Sky War Hundreds of lightyears from Earth, a long range human exploratory vessel The Winter Pendulum was surveying a new planet orbiting a red dwarf star. The records of what happened on the planet’s surface were never recovered and the Empire had more pressing issues than dealing with a single lost War Ship. In possession of a advanced technology and human slaves the Kelk were able to advance from a primitive society to one capable of space travel in a few decades. Their rapid expansion into space quickly lead to the Kelk encountering human worlds. The Kelk conquered several worlds before the Empire could respond. But when they did they took world after world until the Kelk were driven back into their region of space. The Kelk started the Nawka Kri, loosely translated as Black Sky War. The Black Sky War has continued for a century and the Kelk have proved to be the Empire's greatest threat. The Kelk's ability to adapt stolen technology to their own purposes and their incredible resilience have made them formidable. Further study has identified different clans within the Kelk race, and they appear to war with one another as much as they war with humans. So far this has been the only saving grace of the conflict. ' ' The Tear of Destruction While the Paxia empire was under stress of protecting their borders from the Kelk, an unknown threat was hurtling towards our galaxy, a "cloud" of asteroid-sized chunks of exotic matters the size and shape of a dwarf galaxy, approximately 120 light years across. The cloud is made up of different types of exotic dark matters of various masses. The cloud made first impact with the galaxy at the galactic rim near Sol, undetectable until masses of the exotic matter began to collide with stars and planets. The effect was devastating. The various forms of exotic matter had unpredictable interactions with normal matter. Some collisions caused stars to simply have massive solar eruptions, sterilizing their planets but leaving them largely intact. Some stars went supernova, utterly destroying their planets and bombarding the planets of nearby stars with lethal amounts of gamma rays. Some stars somehow collapsed into black holes, but without any added mass, leaving their solar systems intact, with all orbiting planets in their usual orbits, but now dark, cold and lifeless, any remaining inhabitants abandoning the surface to find warmth in subterranean cities heated by geothermal plants. Some star systems were lucky enough to be unaffected, but are cut off from communication and trade routes. This exotic matter cloud eventually came to be called the Astral Cataclysm. ' ' Rebellion As realization of what was happening set in, panic erupted. Inhabited systems within the path of the Astral Cataclysm used every means at their disposal to evacuate. The Empire’s limited number of Warp Ships sparked conflicts over who was taken and who was left behind. The Empire’s control over the technology became a liability. Some desperate inhabitants even fled in the old sub-light generational craft which had all but gone extinct when the Warp Ships were invented. It's believed that there are still a good number of such craft operational, with an unknown number of people aboard them, wandering the stars. The Astral Cataclysm has also opened up new opportunities. Planets, either abandoned or left defenseless by the disasters that befell them (or which will soon befall them), were ripe for plunder by bandits, governments and corporations. ' ' Kelk Assault on Sol At first the Empire kept word of the Anomaly quiet and this allowed them to managed the evacuation of the most important worlds first. But once world reached the rest of the stars call for aid and panic ensued. Slowly the Empire was forced to pull more and more of its ships away from the Kelk regions of space. Amid the chaos the Kelk launched an offensive against Sol. With severely disrupted communications and broken and dangerous supply lines the humans were not able to defend the system or send enough reinforcements to protect it. Jupiter High Command was turned to slag, the orbital palaces over Venus were ransacked, and Earth was bathed in the blood of the Paxia Empire's ruling aristocracy. ' ' Fall of the Empire Worlds in panic. Some worlds in rebellion. Whole systems destroyed. The Kelk rampaging across human space and the fall of the Empire Throne was the final straw. Many Empire commanders sized control of their ships and declared their alliance with other worlds or became freelancers. World wide riots erupted and murdered much of the ruling class. The Aristocracy that did not escape were hunted down and killed. Those that survived took what wealth they could and vanished into the shadows of the world they were stuck on. With no leadership, Human civilization fractured into many factions led by various warlords, pirates, religious leaders, and former generals. ' ' Discovery of the Exo Material With the ability for nearly anyone to harvest negative-mass exotic matter without using the Paxia Empires secret Hawking Drive the playing field for constructing new Exo-Warp capable ships was sharply leveled. In short order the Empire’s stranglehold on transportation and communication between systems crumbled. In addition, the exotic matter found in the Astral Cataclysm’s wake allowed for the creation of stable, traversable wormholes. This caused a second major revolution in the realm of faster-than-light travel. A wormhole can be created, originally with the start and end points of the wormhole at the same physical location, but once created the two openings can be physically moved (usually by Warp Ship) to some other point in space. Moving the wormhole openings is a delicate process that is done as little as possible, but it allows subsequent ships to journey between the wormholes, instantly, without being warp-capable themselves. Not only does this allow factions that don't have the resources to create Warp Ships to traverse these distances, it has other advantages as well. Wormholes can be placed closer to inhabited planets, and they also allow for information to be sent directly through them, for effectively faster-than-light communication between systems. In addition, negative-mass exotic matter has application to weapons and armor creation as well.